


Escape Velocity

by Bagheera



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, Elseworlds, Escape, Happy Ending, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Red Kryptonite, Rescue, Running, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2012-12-19
Packaged: 2017-11-21 14:43:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/598916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bagheera/pseuds/Bagheera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if the meteor rocks had given Lex super speed?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escape Velocity

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as part of a series of AUs with a common theme: what if either Clark or Lex had the powers - or the backstory - of different superheroes and villains? 
> 
> This AU is set between S2 and S3, in the time in which in canon, Clark is under the influence of red K and Lex is on the island. It was betaed by xparrot, all remaining errors are mine.

From here to there, from the beginning of the world to its end, from the fire in the sky to this cage without sunlight, it is the same wish.

I wish I were fast enough.

It starts when Lex's lungs burn with fear and he feels the sky breathing hotly down his neck, the thunder of something terrible racing down towards him and he can't run anymore, he has to stop, and then there's wind and dust rushing up all around him and his last clear thought is –

I wish I were fast enough to run.

When they finally find him, confused and shivering on a beach by the Pacific, thousands of miles from where the meteors impacted, his Dad's face is frightening.

He touches Lex's head, where the last strands of hair are loosening, carried away by the stiff salty breeze, and for the first time he looks at Lex like Lex is something other than vaguely disappointing.

Lex remembers that touch very clearly, how it wasn't comforting then and isn't comforting now when it closes around the back of his neck in a way that tells him that he isn't disappointing at all, because he is valuable.

Sometimes it's his Dad who tells him to hold still. Most of the time it is apathy that stings numbly like a dull needle.

These days Lex can't concentrate. His thoughts jump around like grasshoppers when a wandering foot disturbs them, this and that way, without rhyme or reason. They're too quick to grasp, too erratic, and soon they're lost in the undergrowth of glass and steel and white padding, vanishing in the corners of the room, in the seams of the world. Hands of strangers brush them off Lex's vibrating skin as they make him hold still.

But he used to be like lightning, a clear sharp line that always hits its aim, faster than the eye could follow. He remembers that.

If only he could remember what was a moment ago.

When he was eleven, he did something good.

He's on the stairs when the baby stops crying, preparing to sneak out. Lex sneaks by being faster than sound:, before anyone looks, he is gone. But that time the sound is gone before him, and suddenly the hall is silent, like the aftermath of a thunderclap.

There's an instant when the butterfly wings of time stop fluttering for Lex and he is perfectly still, caught between running from and running to.

Then he saves his brother's life.

"Julian," Lex says, a question, because suddenly he isn't sure. Did he save him? The hand on the back of his neck twitches, closing tighter for a moment and Lex can almost, almost remember.

"You're doing well, Lex, very well."

He thinks he might be, as he slips under, running under the waves of sleep instead of atop. Lex dreams like a normal person, or rather, his dreams are as fast as he is.

He spent a lot of time alone. Each night was a hundred days when a minute of sleep sufficed, and Lex remembers books, heaps of books, libraries he devoured in the time from dinner to breakfast, when they thought he was asleep in his room.

He'd like a book, although he isn't sure he could follow the letters now. Everything's shivering all the time, and maybe it’s the cold. Has he forgotten to eat? He gets cold when he doesn't eat, and he needs to eat all the time, because he is a furnace of speed. Someone used to laugh about his eating habits. That thought lingers for a while, like a vapour, and Lex gets dizzy trying to follow its path, especially because it is dark now, and that is unusual.

It's been day for a very long time, Lex feels. The lights never go out and every moment is eternity. The lights were on in his mom's hospital room the night she died. Lex remembers seeing them go out. Maybe he's dying, too.

When Clark appears, he tells him that. Clark was there the last time Lex died, so Clark will know. But Clark looks scared. So maybe he doesn't know.

There's no answer either way. Lex closes his eyes against Clark's chest, and wishes they would run.

*

It's still night when someone forces him to drink. It's more sugar than anything else, like honey, like nectar, as befits a hummingbird person. There's a hand cupping Lex's head, but it's holding him up, not down.

"I would've hit you with my car if I hadn't been fast enough to push you out of the way," Lex says, but it's too fast for normal people.

Clark laughs. Or maybe he's crying.

*

The next time Lex pushes away the cup of nectar and remembers anger.

"I followed him in there," he would yell if he had the voice for it. "I trusted him."

Clark looks very earnest and sorry. Why the fuck is Clark here anyways? "Where are we?"

"Metropolis."

It's not night anymore, and not day either. There's a window with steel-coloured twilight behind it, and a nice apartment. Lex is on a bed that isn't white. Dark sheets. Metropolis. Fuck. That isn't far enough.

"Where do you want to go?" Clark asks, and Lex realizes he has spoken out loud. He talked a lot to himself in there. Nothing else to listen to. Nothing else to fill forever.

He wants to go anywhere but Level 33.1, hell in a skyscraper. He tells Clark so. Clark is sixteen plus eternity, and he lives on a farm. He can't take Lex anywhere except to where it's safe and warm.

They seem to go there awfully fast.

"I followed him," Lex slurs. "Like fucking Isaac to the altar."

*

There's a surf. It smells vaguely of salt and sand and wood. Lex is lying on a couch – some coarse cloth, probably on purpose to give it a rustic, earthy feel. There are windows and a glass door, a terrace, a grey sky and grey sea. On his lips he tastes sweetness.

Clark is talking. His voice comes halting, with long pauses, from somewhere Lex can't see. He's on the phone, Lex realizes, and once he says "Mom" before he hangs up. And comes into view.

Clark looks different. Lex isn't so dazed anymore. The world has stopped shivering for a moment, and Clark definitely looks different. His hair is long and shaggy, and he's brushing it out of his face now, still all beautiful angles, but pale in the blue-grey light of the sea, as if he hasn't walked under the golden Kansas sun for a long time. There's a downward twist to his lips, one that Lex hasn't seen before, and not a single bit of primary coloured cloth on him. Black leather jacket, though, and a dark shirt.

He's playing with something in his hands, something small and shiny. But when Lex moves, he puts it away in a dark box on the coffee table in front of the couch and crouches before Lex. The look in his eyes is gentle, all Clark. As is his smile, even though it is too subdued, not bright enough.

"Are you hungry?"

"Where are we?"

Lex didn't know that shrugs could have wild edges like this careless, rebellious one. "Twenty miles out of Gotham City, I'd say."

"I was out that long?" And how long was he in hell before that?

"Not very long, Lex." There's a glint in Clark's eyes, but it goes away quickly. "You remember what happened?"

"I followed him in."

"You said that before." That's because Lex can't stop thinking it.

"We talked about Julian. About LexCorp. Dad said he was willing to let me go because Julian was shaping up to be such a fine…."

Clark tenses all over, and in his dark clothes and dark hair, he resembles something that has come prowling out of the jungle to kill. Something that has tasted blood and is smelling it again now. "He was going to replace you."

Lex chuckles. It feels like spitting bile. "He replaced me eleven years ago, when he got my mom pregnant again."

And now Clark is going to ask why.

"So he could free me as a resource, you understand. For research. I'm a lot more valuable like that. And Julian's a lot easier to control."

Clark must think Lex is crazy. But Lex is very sane now. There were drugs, he realizes, but none of them last long in his system. "I'm not like other people."

Clark smiles softly. "I know, Lex."

Lex seizes his hand, forces him to look him in the eye with all his will. He's vibrating again, so urgent is this. "No, Clark. I'm not talking about my hair or being the son of a fucked up billionaire bastard." He didn't quite want to say it that way, but he's not able to filter the truth now that it comes spilling out of his mouth. "I can move faster than sound. Almost as fast as light. I would've hit you with my car if –"

" – you hadn't pushed me out of the way. I know."

Lex stares at him. Clark's eyes are full of amusement now. "I'm not normal, either," he says slyly. "I watched you jump out of that Porsche."

*

The next time Lex wakes for longer than it takes to sip from the bottle of tea sweetened with heaps of sugar which Clark has left by the couch, Clark is nowhere around. It's day – still or again, Lex can't tell – and raining in torrents outside, so heavily that the cliffs and the sea aren't visible anymore. Lex sits up and for the first time assesses himself.

He's wearing a dark shirt, several sizes too large, worn but not old. Something expensive, because it feels oddly familiar. Right.

They put him in cotton scrubs and straightjackets in there.

It takes a while to swallow the anger and return to the task at hand. Under the blanket, which Lex lifts and pushes away, he wears a pair of grey sweatpants, also expensive, also too large. He's barefoot and feels like he needs several showers.

Lex lifts his legs off the couch and feels them touch the floor. Wooden planks. He gets up. As soon as he stands he wants to run, but he can hardly stay upright. His knees tremble like a toddler's as he walks, and he has to grab the furniture, stumbling like a drunk. By the time he finds the hall and the bathroom, he's exhausted and his eyes sting. He remembers dimly that he's been here before. Clark has carried him, held him upright, dressed and undressed him. But it's Clark. Compared to everything else, it's hardly humiliating to have been seen so weak.

After emptying his bladder, Lex slips out of the pants and awkwardly pulls off the shirt. He's always been on the verge of looking starved, burning too brightly, too fast, but now he can hardly stand to look at himself, skeletal and ashen as he is. He sinks down in the corner of the shower stall, staring at sand-coloured tiles as warm water prickles on his skin and counts the drops, every single one, until he has reached numbers so high his head spins. Then he uses the soap. Something cheap and sweet, a girly flowery shower gel, not something Clark would ever touch.

Lex isn't so choosy anymore.

His skin feels clean but he does not. Yet. He picks up a fuzzy beige bathrobe. It's a little tight around the shoulders, but otherwise fits him much better than the too large clothes he wore before. The final luxury is a toothbrush – used, Lex hopes it is Clark's – and toothpaste.

His mirror image doesn't look quite sane yet, wild grey eyes under a shadow of exhaustion in a too thin face.

But no scars. If Lex remembers correctly, there would be scars if he were normal, but there are none. He heals too fast to scar.

They found that very fascinating.

He leaves the bathroom, and stumbles back to the couch, only he chooses the wrong door and ends up in a bedroom. This has to be someone's holiday retreat; it's too clean, too well-ordered to be a real home. Not the Kents', though, because the Kents are poor.

Clark lies on the bed, on his back, eyes closed, his arms flung out. Lex hasn't seen this much of his skin since that night he found Clark in the field, tied to a cross.

He's definitely not sane, because where the S was smeared in red paint, it is now written in angry red scars. No, it's an eight, surrounded by a diamond shape, but it looks too much alike to be coincidence.

Clark said he wasn't normal. But being very fast and very strong and able to heat sugar water with your eyes doesn't account for this kind of thing.

Lex walks closer on unsteady feet, his eyes burning with tiredness and a tenuous grasp on reality. It's very silent. Clark makes no sound as he sleeps, even though he is breathing, slow and regular. Lex's knees touch the bed. He stares down. It looks like a brand, like blisters.

Whoever did this will pay. Lex doesn't have a family name or a fortune anymore, but he's the fastest man alive. If only he weren't currently collapsing on the bed and therefore on Clark.

Since the day the meteors taught him to run, he never knew when to stop. Now he's burned away all his reserves and it’s a long, agonizing slide down. His head sinks onto Clark's shoulder, his calves brush against hairy ones, and then there's an arm slung around him while his eyelids droop heavily, and Clark pulls him close.

*

He's slightly damp with sweat when he wakes again, this time tasting the tang of terror for a second at being half pinned down. But it's just the bathrobe, too warm for lying in bed, pinned down under Clark. And that's Clark's thigh, wedged between his, then. It's broad and solid, and Lex is very, very aware of it.

He has forgotten how attracted he used to be to Clark.

Clark stirs and moves closer. His nose is a little cold as he nuzzles against Lex's scalp. "Lex?" he mumbles, and then there's a small gasp and Clark is gone so fast that he is actually fast, even for Lex. Lex rolls around onto his back. Clark sits hunched on the other end of the bed, looking spooked.

"Sorry," he says.

It is time to be cautious. "I should apologize."

"No," Clark says. He shakes his head for emphasis. "I could crush you in my sleep."

"You didn't."

"We – "

"Were both asleep. It's nothing to worry about." Lex feels good. Adult and calm, and warm and still a bit damp and safe. Like he's about to seize control over his life again. "How long have we been here?"

"We came last night."

"Straight from Metropolis?"

Clark nods. "I'm sorry it took me so long to find you. I'm sorry I ran away. I would have realized you were gone earlier if I hadn't."

"You ran away?" Lex asks.

They lie in bed for a long time as Clark tells him about being an alien destined to rule the world.

*

Clark brings food. Running the twenty miles to Gotham takes him no longer than a trip to the fridge. He brings plastic bags full of boxes with Chinese food to satisfy both their appetites, and at least a dozen cans of soda.

If Lex doesn't think to hard about what happened and who they are, he's almost giddy now. He wants to race Clark, wants to play. Wants to be free with Clark. Maybe they already are. But even though he's not human, Clark is still a minor. For just another year. Lex has lost six months, has missed one of Clark's birthdays. Clark has lost a lifetime of innocence.

"Have you ever run to China?" he asks Clark.

Clark laughs. "You can't run to China, Lex. There's a whole lot of ocean."

"I can," Lex says.

"Over water?"

"Yeah."

"Wow. So you've been…"

"Everywhere. Gotham, too."

As he demolishes his fifth box of noodles and chicken, Lex contemplates the only man who ever beat him in a fair fight. In those first hazy hours after Clark rescued him, Lex had some vague notion that Bruce might be involved.

Lionel didn't send Lex back to boarding school until Julian was born – until after Lex saved his little brother's life, in fact. It felt like both a punishment and a reward. One the one hand he was a bald kid in a school full of mean little rich boys; on the other hand, there were no doctors, no tests, and very few watchful eyes.

Bruce is a year younger than him, and even more of a freak than Lex is. They might never have met if Lex didn't have the speed and too much time on his hands. Lex met Bruce one night in the chemistry lab when he was bored enough to put some of the things he'd read in books into action. Bruce was studying, with a fierce determination to absorb knowledge as quickly and efficiently as possible, and for Bruce, that meant without teachers to slow him down. He was only at Excelsior to be with people his own age, but the attempt to get him to open up was an unsuccessful one.

At first they just mutually tolerated each other. Then Lex blew up the lab one night, and they shifted their nightly activities to the library, then the small observatory, then the gym, tackling new subjects of study. The first couple of times they sparred Lex cheated by dancing in slow motion on the mats, but Bruce had a mean punch and Lex had a temper.

He was never so dazed as that first time he moved at full speed and Bruce still managed to hit him.

"Preparation time," was all Bruce gave as an explanation. "I watched you."

Just like Clark has watched him. Lex decides that he will contact Bruce, once he has regained his strength. They always were competitive, and Bruce is far too territorial to face him while Lex is anything but at the top of his game.

*

"You were careful when you broke me out." Lex has to verify that, again and again. Clark is starting to look annoyed. He walks over to a big duffel bag near the entry, where Clark left it when they broke in – that's what Clark did, he simply broke into someone's holiday retreat, because that's what he's learned to do in those months in Metropolis – and pulls out some black lump and tosses it at Lex.

It's a ski mask. Well, at least Lionel won't suspect some teenaged farmboy to have been behind it. The Kents will be safe.

"You should go home, Clark."

"My Dad lost a leg," Clark snaps. He has told Lex about it. His Dad was working in the barn when Clark blew up the storm cellar. His Mom wasn't hurt at all, she was in town, buying groceries. "They've lost the farm because of me. And they've got a real baby now."

"Your parents love you," Lex says. He saw that, many times over the two years he has known the Kents. They're not like Lionel at all. "I can't keep you here."

Clark, who has been pacing like a tiger, swoops down and grabs the little black box from the coffee table. "I'm not leaving you."

But he does, and the door slams on his way out.

Lex is asleep on the couch when Clark comes back. He's silent, treads softly on the wooden floor and the carpets, closes the doors like a thief. Only his leather jacket creaks as he kneels beside the couch, and that's what rouses Lex from fitful sleep, the unfamiliar smell of wet leather and smoke, only very faintly like Clark.

His face is the same as ever, though, perfect and so very clean, his voice clear and urgent. "I'm not going back."

Lex can only open his mouth in objection, but Clark grabs his shoulder. "I was scared. Scared of what I would become. That's why I put on the ring. I couldn't take it off until I found you. But now I can."

He's wearing it, Lex can see the red stone glint darkly out of the corner of his eye. But Clark lowers his head to Lex's chest, breathes in deeply. It's not a friendly touch, not really, too needy and too intimate. Lex hasn't ever really touched anyone like this, or been touched that way. He's never let anybody close enough. His speed is hard to hide when desire comes into play – he shouldn't think about Clark this way. Shouldn't think about desire at all, until Clark is old enough, even though Clark is fast and not human, and can bend steel and catch bullets. But it's hard to pretend Clark is innocent now, when he wasn't entirely before, responding to Lex's half serious teases.

"I know what I'm doing," Clark murmurs into Lex's shirt, and it sounds like "I know what I want."

And maybe Lex doesn't know. He knows this –

He wants to be fast enough. Fast enough to get away. Fast enough to be free, fast enough to escape destiny. He wants to be fast enough to save lives. He wants to be fast enough to get his revenge.

And he is. Clark got him out and now Lex is free. But it still feels like he's running from and not to, even as Clark's hands run over his body, under the blanket, over Lex's shirt, firmly and urgently. Clark makes a humming, shushing noise deep in his throat that Lex can feel in his belly.

"I'm not going to do anything," Clark soothes, and it is slow speech, normal people speech, a current of air so languid that Lex can feel every single molecule of it stroking over his collarbone. It's over in a second. He's sure Clark has felt it, the sudden build up and release as Lex went hard and spent himself, tortured by every snail touch. "I'm not going to do anything," Clark repeats, and there's a huff in it, like swallowed laughter.  
"See, I can take it off." And he does, slips the ring off his finger, puts it on the table carefully with a click. He shrugs off his jacket and climbs onto the sofa and there's more sleep, so much that Lex is starting to feel drunk with it, carried on the waves by the undercurrent of Clark's gravity.

*

The next day Lex is up early and feels strong, alert and restless. He goes outside onto the terrace while Clark is in the bathroom, and a second later, he's running along the cliffs, a jagged zig-zag path a hundred metres above the sea, and all it would take is a misstep, a jump, to carry him into the air. He'd fly, so fast he is, shoot through the wind like one of the graceful seabirds. And then he'd fall, slowly like a leaf in autumn, tumble like a cherry blossom.

Before he can do it, there's a path down to the beach, a steep slope, not quite a fall, that catches him.

He's back when Clark exits the bathroom. He has put the croissants and coffee and marmalade onto the table in the living room of their hideout and somewhere in between plates and paper bags, tiny and innocuous, lies the red ring. Lex smells of the Atlantic that was under his feet a moment ago.

"Did you buy this?" Clark asks, all wide-eyed and surprised, innocent today, not at all like the young man who came to him last night. He lifts up the paper bag. "In France?"

"Switzerland," Lex corrects. "I made a few transactions."

Over the phone, because his clothes are several sizes to large and he still looks like he escaped from a refugee camp or a mental ward somewhere. He borrowed the change, but by now the store he took it from will be amply rewarded by an anonymous donor. Now Lex has money, and in a few hours, he will have access to a small fortune again. He hasn't exactly prepared for this, but he always expected to have to be able to stand on his own feet some day.

Clark grins, and tucks into the croissants. Lex has already eaten about ten of them, and now he feels exhausted. How long will it take to rebuild his reserves? His metabolism is fast, but it'll be at least two or three more days. By now, Lionel must be frantically looking for him.

"I'm going to ruin him," Lex says, more to himself. He can do it, with a little help. "But I need to get Julian to safety first."

Clark looks disgruntled. Their rivalry amused Lex each time Julian came to visit in Smallville.

"He's a spoiled brat, Clark, but he's only ten. He had no say in this. I doubt he even knows about it. You know there's no need to be jealous, don't you? He might be my brother by blood, but I feel - "

Clark smirks at that. "I know how you feel about me, Lex. It's not very brotherly. It's also not very hard to miss."

Lex falls silent and stares at him. Clark blushes a little at the same time as he tries to look nonchalant. His eyes sneak to the ring.

"Is this something you realized while you ran away?" Lex asks cautiously.

"Admitted to myself, maybe," Clark says, and shrugs cockily. Then he deflates visibly, looking awkward all of a sudden. "I wasn't really sure before. I thought maybe I was seeing stuff that wasn't there."

Lex has a whole palette of assurances and apologies, but after last night, they seem pretty much moot. "You keep a lot to yourself, Clark."

Clark glances up from the table, then dips his lashes again, smiling sheepishly. "I thought it would be fair if both of us lied. You got to keep your secrets, and I got to keep mine. Worked fine, didn't it?"

*

What starts then is a staccato dance all across the continent, all across the planet, always ending up back in their hideout. Books and laptops pile on the coffee table and on the floor, piles of files that grow as Lex flits from city to city, from LuthorCorp office to LuthorCorp office. Often it's just a sheet of paper here, a small disk there. But altogether, it's enough to gut the company. He doesn't tell Clark what he's doing, is gone every time before Clark can ask. It probably wouldn't make sense to Clark anyways.

By noon, Lex has had five naps and seven lunches, in China, in Japan, in Russia, in England. He feels alive with every thrumming fibre of his being and when Clark finally stops him with a hand on his arm, demanding what Lex is doing, Lex simply rushes out,

"Race you," and then he's gone.

Only he isn't. The land is frozen around them, but Clark moves, by Lex's side, joining him in exuberant flight. They end up laughing and breathless on a glacier in Alaska, stopping when Lex lets Clark catch him.

His laughter turns to shivers, gasps that might almost be sobs. Clark's arms are around him for warmth and he's shaking, falling apart. Broken words tumble from his mouth about being frozen and dead and slow, so slow he might as well be dead, and how he forgot everything in there, even Clark.

Clark gives him his jacket and lifts him up like a child. Lex would protest, but he's dizzy. He manages to catch some sleep in the minute Clark needs to run them back home, and several litres of sticky sweet soda bring him back to life. He used to keep energy bars hidden in his suits and dress shirts, but soda reminds him of freedom, of Clark and the loft. One of these days he needs a more permanent solution to his hunger problem.

Explaining what he's planning to do isn't easy. Clark might know things now, but they're not the right things. Clark has robbed a bank and messed around with girls and tried to get drunk and high. He's been vague about his months in Metropolis, but not too vague, like he wants Lex to ask more questions. But he knows nothing about bank accounts, shareholders, board rooms and how to destroy a monster like LuthorCorp.

Lex isn't going to destroy the whole company. It's possible, but the collateral damage would be terrible. Instead, he's going to make the company just vulnerable enough to turn it into prey. All he needs now is someone to do the hostile takeovers for him, someone who will listen to Lex.

Clark is more impressed by what he calls Lex's "hacking skills". "I thought Chloe was cool," he whistles.

Lex has a love – hate relationship with computers. They're agonizingly slow, but on the other hand, people are even slower. He prefers to work on at least five or six laptops at once, and the laptops he has bought with the money from his secret accounts are crap compared to the experimental high-end technology he used to work on.

It turns out that Clark can speed read and speed type, but fails at talking and listening to Lex's superspeed chatter. His ears can't decode the high frequencies. They work out another system instead – Lex scribbles on paper and hands it to Clark, who replies the same way. If someone watched them, they'd only see an ever-growing flurry of paper scraps and two blurry figures flitting back and forth between a bunch of computers.

"I think you'd be really good at this world ruling stuff," Clark says some time around 5 p.m., flopping down on the couch. "Maybe I should give Jor-El your number."

Lex feels exhilarated and keyed up, but he pretends to scoff in good humour at Clark's suggestion. The grin he can't quite suppress. "I don't have the frustration tolerance. The world is too slow for my taste."

"True. By the time the world noticed your bid for domination, you'd probably have moved on to something else. How did you ever manage to stay sane in Smallville?"

"Daydreams," Lex says, smiling slowly. It's a tease, and Clark picks up easily, returning the smile with that ever charming bashful look.

"Take-out?"

Lex nods. He doesn't know about Clark, but he can't cook. Boiling water is torture for him. Sandwiches are another matter, but their fridge is empty again.

It's falafel and salads and honey-dripping Turkish desserts this time, and Lex says, "You've become quite a connoisseur, Clark."

"I lived off this stuff," Clark shrugs. "Pizza gets boring after a while."

"Did you really rob a bank?" The thought makes Lex slightly nervous. He has done some pretty reckless things with his speed during his teenage years, but he never risked getting shot at – well, almost never.

"An ATM." Clark's smile is wry, his shrug a little uneasy. "I didn't really know how else to get money."

Lex glances at Clark's leather jacket, the expensive jeans, the fashionable shirt. "You spent it on clothes?"

"And cars," Clark grins. They share that appreciation for a completely pointless commodity: neither of them needs fast cars, both of them love them.

"So I guess you impressed a lot of girls?" It does come out easily enough, but Clark catches the shift in tone nonetheless. His answering gaze is piercing, challenging.

"And boys."

Unnerving. Just like the thought of Clark putting on a ski mask and robbing an ATM. Irreconcilable with the sweet innocent boy he befriended in Smallville – and yet not. He can just imagine how Clark did it, with that wild smile, cocky, but still somehow innocent, even as he is devious. Too playful. Not a criminal, only a superhuman being doing some teenage rebellion.

Lex shakes his head and tries to be amused. "And there I was sure you were saving yourself for Lana Lang." He hates having missed out on so much. What would he have done if he had been there? He'd have found Clark, that's for sure.

Clark looks oddly surprised for a second, as if he had completely forgotten Lex. Then he gives Lex a sly sideways glance. "Who says I'm not still saving myself?"

Lex frowns. Clark is an insufferable tease. "Clark. I hate to be prying, but how far did you go?"

"I didn't take any of them home."

Lex releases a breath he had been holding for a while. The unexpected depths aren't quite as deep. Clark's sprawl on the floor loosens provocatively. He lets his thighs fall wide until the inseam of his jeans is tight and leans back on his elbows.

"But there's a lot you can do in a car. Or a back alley." He can't stay aloof for long before a smug grin spreads over his face, baring sharp white teeth. "And with your shirt on."

Shirt? Too late, Lex remembers the furious brand on Clark's chest. It hurts to even think of it, of Clark hiding this ugly mark. He claims it only hurts sometimes, but Lex has seen him stiffen suddenly a few times during the day, his face going taut.

"I get the feeling you want to tell me more," Lex says slowly. It's an invitation. If Clark is mature enough to talk about it like an adult, Lex guesses, then he is mature enough to do it.

Clark's eyes gleam. "Or I could demonstrate. We could pretend the couch is the backseat of my car."

The problem is, that Clark doesn't really make a difference between talking and doing. This is foreplay, and Lex is damned if he doesn't know it. When Clark gets up and prowls around the coffee table to the couch, he doesn't scoot aside to make room, but he doesn't ward him off either. He just swallows and looks up at him and tries to endure the endless spaces between the seconds without falling apart.

Clark stands in front of him, looking down. He's just the tiniest bit tense, not enough to seem as awkward and gangly as he used to. Maybe Clark will never seem like that again; he might have outgrown it while Lex was gone. He cocks his head, considering.

And then he melts into motion. It's like an incredible weight is lifted off Lex, the weight of being earthbound and slow, of holding himself back. Normal people kiss at the speed of glaciers, but Clark is just right. Not as fast as Lex wants it to be, which is good, because then it would all be hurried and breathless. As it is, Clark gives him a quick brush of lips, then a nip on his neck, just beneath his jaw. A lick, tasting him, and nothing but the wind has been able to tickle Lex like this, to make him gasp and groan and throw back his head. His hands shoot up, one grabbing Clark's shoulder, digging into his shirt, the other grasping at his hair, which is long and silky, perfect to hold onto and pull. Clark growls in pleasure and lets himself be pulled down.

Lex strokes his hair, drowns in its scent as Clark sucks at his throat and lets his large hands wander down Lex's chest. His fingers undo the buttons of Lex's shirt and he shrugs out of it. Clark throws it over the coffee table and they tumble down on the couch as the shirt seems frozen in the air, falling infinitely slow compared to their own unearthly speed.

Clark frames Lex's body with hands, running them over every vibrating limb, then holds his hips possessively as he bends his head down. He kneels between Lex's splayed legs and waits until Lex lifts his head to look down at him. Clark flushes as he licks his lips and dips his head, and Lex can feel his eyes roll back into his head as he bucks up.

Normal speed allows an infinite number of doubts to arise before every action, lets Lex plan ahead fifty moves, but Clark has caught up with him and now his head is just spinning, dizzy with speed and want, and he can't think, can't doubt, can't hesitate. Clark sucks a small bruise to the hollow of his hip, then lets his teeth graze over Lex's erection through his pants. By the time Clark has unbuckled the belt and pulled down the zipper, Lex is blind with lust and all it takes is the tiniest brush of wet lips over the head of his cock and he thrusts up. Clark gags, wet and warm and convulsing around him, and then sucks him in deeper. Lex yells, then throws an arm over his head to keep out the wave of sensation.

Clark reaches up and pulls Lex's arm away until Lex is forced to look again and see Clark mouth the side of his shaft while his cock slides against Clark's cheek, leaving a wet trail of saliva and it's too much, too sudden, and he can't close his eyes again before he sees the first spurt of come spatter Clark's cheek and his lips and they close around him again and take it all, swallow him –

Lex is gasping and shuddering, and it takes forever to force himself to come down from the speed high, to go slow again. The shirt flutters to the floor, the rain drops are running down the windows once more. Clark looks smug kneeling on the other end of the couch, smug and a bit lust dazed.

Lex pulls himself up and kisses Clark, licks his face clean where Clark's tongue can't reach. "God, Clark –," he whispers roughly into his hair and shivers as Clark's hands stroke down his naked back.

"You're hot," Clark says, sounding unbearably self-satisfied.

Lex doesn't know about hot, since Clark is the first person he has dared to let go with, but he's hard again and doesn't care. Clark has kicked something loose and Lex thinks that maybe he has years of being horny to catch up with now that he has found someone to play with and trust.

*

The bed is filthy in the morning, and so are they. The sheets reek of sex and there are cookie crumbs in places where there should be no cookie crumbs, like the backs of Lex's knees where his skin is sticky from sweat. Empty soda cans and food containers litter the floor from the breaks they took to replenish their energy. Lex feels like they had the sex of ten years and a five week honeymoon all rolled up in one night. If his body couldn't heal a broken leg in minutes, he doesn't think he'd be able to walk and even so, it's more of a limp to the bathroom.

He looks at himself in the mirror and nods. He's not glowing like Clark, who looks like a sleeping demigod in the tangled sheets, but he definitely looks alive again. It's time.

He cleans up and goes out for a few errands, fetching the clothes he ordered. They're not perfectly fitted, but as close as it gets, and a crisp shirt and tie are the closest thing to armour Lex knows. New shoes, Italian leather with special soles, a cell phone, a suit, a couple of energy bars. He's ready to go into battle.

They clean up the house – once things have settled down, Lex will recompense the owner, something Clark would probably have forgotten – and Clark carries the files and laptops to the black Jaguar that he has produced from somewhere. Lex shakes his head at Clark's idea of an inconspicuous car, but then again, this is Gotham and at least it's not a cabriolet and it has tinted windows. Of course, Lex will probably have to pay for the car, too. Clark's attitude towards property and breaking and entering is a little worrisome. Clark himself is tense, hardly speaking to Lex.

When they're finally in the car, ready to leave, Clark pulls Lex over before he can turn the key and kisses him breathless, rough and exuberant. "Do we really need your friend?"

Lex catches Clark's hand. He's wearing the ring again. The more Lex sees of it, the more he hates it. It's a shackle Clark shouldn't be wearing anymore, because they both are free. "Do you really need this?"

Clark's eyes narrow; then he pulls the ring off almost viciously. "I can take it off," he snarls and balls his hand into a fist. It's shocking and sudden, an outburst Lex didn't realize was coming. There's a crunching noise as it breaks, and red meteor dust rains down on the stick shift. Clark gasps and recoils, arching back against the door of the car. Lex tries to touch him, but Clark wards him off, convulsing, yelling in pain. He claws at his shirt. All of a sudden he slumps, going slack.

Clark keeps on panting for a while. Then he pats down his chest, his eyes widening. Lex swallows but doesn't dare to touch him. Whatever spell was on Clark is broken, he can see it lifting from Clark, the wildness and fever leaving his eyes. Only a faint shadow remains behind. Clark pulls up the black T-shirt he's wearing. The brand is gone, his skin unmarked. They share a look and Clark breaks into a smile, infinitely relieved and exhausted.

Lex feels like they have both gone through a furnace, have been broken and mended themselves. Clark is older now, but he has learned his lesson. He can go home now if he wants to. And Lex can go forward, no longer chased but chasing, not running away but following a clear cut cause.

He will have revenge, and he will be free.

"Thank you," he tells Clark. "For everything."

Clark blinks at him, still a bit confused, then rolls his eyes. "I'm not leaving you. They might catch one of us, if they're lucky. But never both of us. Not if we're working together." He flicks on the radio, turns the key in the ignition. Lex steps onto the accelerator. It feels like a dream and it might be, but in his dreams Lex always runs alone.

"We're a team," Clark says. "Let's go."


End file.
